Author Notes

Hi, friends! As I've said a million times, this isn't abandoned and will never be abandoned…but I may fall on my face posting for, well, years. Truth be told, this chapter was ready to go mid-summer. Unfortunately, just as I was sending it to my beta, she had some health complications. While I hate to publish this without her wise blessing, I don't want to hold it back from readers any longer. Please forgive the flagrant use of commas and lack of polish as she was not able to fine tune this chapter.

Other housekeeping…if you ever read over on that other site with the vowels in its acronym, I'm going to start cross posting over there, as well. For the time being I'll post in both locations, but you may want to follow over there just in case something happens to this site!

And now…I'll get out of your way because as Taylor would say, "It's been a long time coming…"

Chapter Fifteen: Eight Minus Five

Present Day

Charlie POV

"Well, then, find me someone who does have a transcript of the interview!" I yelled into the phone.

The Billings PD uni on the other end had the audacity to grumble under her breath at me. "Sir, I understand your frustration, but we're a much larger department than Forks. We have to follow protocol—"

"Proto-…Nonono you—"

"AND THAT MEANS," she said over me on the other end, "that under no circumstances am I sharing information about an investigation I'm not even assigned to. The detectives assigned to the Heroldson case will be back at the station later today. I'm sure they'd be happy to talk to you."

I fell back into my chair. "We should be working together on this. There's no reason why this needs to be so hard."

"I'm sure the detectives will be more than willing to work closely with your department."

"Yeah, great," I muttered. "Just…have them call back as soon as they're back in."

I slammed the phone back onto its cradle. Praise the Lord that office phones could still give a guy a satisfying end to a shitty conversation.

"Gonna guess that one wouldn't give you any answers either, huh?" Seth asked with a smirk as he looked up from his phone.

"Not now, kid," I mumbled as I dropped my head into my hands.

Pressure had already been building behind my eyes from the moment I'd woken up, and the pain was only getting worse with every roadblock I had to deal with.

Jake had added to it putting up a pretty good stink about me wanting to go into the station. I knew he was worried, and hell, after seeing what those Cold Ones could do, I sure as hell didn't wanna be running into them, either. But the fact was I needed something to keep my mind occupied while waiting for the Cullens' plane to land in Seattle. Was never a pro at the waiting game and feeling like a sitting duck on the rez made the ants in the pants even worse. No way was I gonna make it sitting with my thumb in my ear waiting around. At least here I could do some good.

Well, kind of, anyway.

Truth be told, it was getting harder and harder by the minute to try and act normal around everyone at the station. I was knowingly using state resources to pay for an investigation that I could—if I wanted to —end today. After all, I knew damn well what had happened to my fallen officer. He'd been killed by a vampire who then stole his car.

And I knew what had happened to Donald Heraldson in 1958. He'd become a vampire and disappeared, just as my little girl had. What happened in the years between then and now was the only real mystery. After he killed Brian, the wolves were able to track him down, pull his body apart, and burn all the motherfucking pieces.

But I couldn't report any of that. I'd either be called crazy or tracked down by the vampire mafia and killed. Or first one, and then the other. I sure as hell wasn't going to risk either with my little girl due into town in just hours. All I could do now was try and do my job —protecting folks. Right now, folks I could actually be useful in protecting were the ones right here in this building. My people didn't need to be digging too far into this. They didn't know it, but the perp was taken care of for good. I'd already lost one good officer to supernatural crap. It was gonna be me putting my head through the noose before anyone else did on my watch, and that included Billings PD. I needed to figure out how many dots they'd connected like yesterday. The idea of keeping innocent officers' noses out of all this was what had finally made Jacob give into me coming to the station, but only if I took one of the guys with me.

So that's how I'd come to find myself sitting in my office for the past two hours nursing a raging headache and having a teenage werewolf acting as my personal bodyguard. Definitely didn't have this in mind when I dropped that letter to Alice in the mailbox.

I sighed loudly and picked the phone back up to dial Meghan's extension. "Grab Rick and come on in, will ya? Billings is giving me the end around, too. I wanna know exactly what they already told you so we can come up with a game plan."

After hanging up the phone, I turned to Seth. "Give us a couple minutes, okay, kid?"

"Aw, come on! I never thought I'd get to actually be a part of an inves—"

"This ain't TV, kid. You're not just gonna listen in on an ongoing investigation because you feel like it." When I saw how far his face fell, I added, "It's not like I won't be sharing this with everyone, anyway. Come on. You'll hear about it soon enough."

Seth stood. "You sure you're going to be okay alone in here?"

I rolled my eyes and said, "Jesus, kid. Yes, of course. Now. Out."

After giving me one last sigh, Seth left and nodded to Meghan and Rick. "No luck, Chief?" Rick asked as they sat down across from me.

"A hot pile of nothing," I said as I leaned back in my seat. "I can't figure out why they won't do more to help us out over here."

"According to one of the guys Meg and I talked to, they don't want to get more involved until they determine what's really going on here," Rick said.

I nodded. "Yeah, you mentioned that when I was on my way in. They give you a reason for that?"

Rick rolled his eyes, "Fairly certain they picture us investigating a crime scene with gardening gloves and banjos strapped to our backs."

I huffed a laugh. "Alright…Well…What did they share with you about the interviews they conducted with the family? You told me on the phone that they weren't exactly cooperative even with that?"

"Not quite," Meaghan said. "To be honest without the exact transcript, we're at the mercy of whatever the BPD will tell us. Their detective only spent a few minutes on the phone with us. He said that the Heroldson parents are both deceased—the father in 1978 and the mother in 1986. Both the brother and sister are still in Montana. His brother, Robert, never left Billings. The sister, Margaret, lives with her daughter in Laurel. As you know, they wouldn't disclose contact information."

"Well, then have our people pull it."

Rick smiled. "Already done, Chief. Just waiting on your approval to make the calls."

As much as I really wanted to pull the trigger on having them call, I figured laying low and playing nice would keep the Billings PD as happy as possible. "No, let's wait to hear back from their guys."

"Really?" Meaghan asked.

"Yeah. No sense pissing them off if we're gonna need to work with them," I said, "Did they give you anything at all about what the family actually said?"

Rick nodded and pulled open the folder with his notes. "A little. Detective Fuller is the lead on the investigation. He told me that he and his partner visited both Robert Heroldson and Margaret Heroldson-Carry. They talked about the trouble Mr. Heroldson had found himself in from time to time and how they always thought it had played into his disappearance. Their parents always believed it was one of his 'disagreements' gone horribly wrong. Both said firmly that they thought his fingerprints showing up on a car in Forks, Washington in 2011 must be 'a cruel hoax.'"

"Kinda hard to fake prints," Meaghan said.

Rick laughed. "Well, can you blame them? What the hell other explanation could there be?"

Vampires. Wolves. Supernatural cornucopia from hell spilling out all over the place.

To them, I just said, "Okay…Well…Our options are limited here, folks. What do you want your next steps to be?"

Meaghan and Rick looked at each other. "We want to head out to Montana. Talk to the family, ourselves. There's not a whole lot more to go on, here. Forensics is still busy trying to determine how a bomb could have gone off in that forest and caused the odd damage it did without leaving any sort of residue. They're also trying to determine which species of wolf left the chunks of fur in the trees."

I sat forward. "Wolf?"

Through the office window, I could see the concern pulled all over Seth's face. Obviously their hearing was pretty decent when they were…normal, too. So much for not eavesdropping on the investigation.

"The lab identified the fur as wolf, but can't get a lock on what species. They're still doing testing," Meaghan explained.

She kept talking, but I'd stopped listening all together. I was worried for the kids on the rez. When I'd had my people collect samples of the fur from the crime scene, I hadn't realized at the time that it would wind up being from fantasy creature I was supposed to keep quiet about.

Fuck.

My heart beating in my ears droned out whatever else Meghan was saying. All crisis training was going clear out the window as images of me wearing a black hoodies and leather gloves and sneaking into the lab starting filled my head. I had to find a way to make this better.

What the fucking fuck has happened to my life in the last twenty-four hours?

"…so really that's where that puts us," Meaghan was saying. Crap. Completely spaced out. "Until the lab has more for us, fitting the pieces together here isn't going to be possible. What do you say, Chief?"

What the hell were they asking for, again?

Oh, Montana. Right.

"Uh, yeah, sure. No sense keeping you here to cool your heels when you could go make nuisances of yourselves out there. Stay until someone finally tells us what's going on with their investigation. Get as much as you can about what they've decided."

Meghan and Rick weren't out of my office more than a couple seconds before Seth came barreling back in and slammed the door behind him. "Jesus, kid, you're gonna take the damn door down."

"You didn't tell us the department had some of our fur," Seth said. "Shit. This is so bad. What are we gonna do? Shit. Shit. Shit."

I put my hands out when Seth started pulling at his hair. "It's okay, kid. Hey-hey!" I said a little louder to try and grab his attention. "It's okay. We'll think of something. Sit."

When Seth had fallen into one of the chairs across from me, I sat back down and said, "How are you just now realizing that we got some of your guys'…fur? I mean, seems like some of you hit the trees pretty hard."

"Don't look at me, Chief. I was unconscious."

"That's right," I said. "You were pretty bad off after that fight."

Seth nodded. "Yeah. The guys were probably more worried about making sure the vamps were put down and that I got back to the rez safely. And it's not like we've ever had to worry about the police investigating somewhere we'd gotten into it with some vampires."

I leaned back heavily into my chair and scrubbed a hand over my eyes. "Don't worry about the lab. I can find a way to get the evidence out."

Silence.

When I dropped my hand back down from my face, Seth was looking at me with wide eyes. "What?" I asked.

"You can't do that, Charlie."

I felt my face flush. "The hell I can't. This is my department, and if I—"

"Exactly," Seth interrupted.

"Seth, if I wanna—"

"You can't. Please."

I sighed. "And why the hell not?"

"Sam would probably say it's not your responsibility."

"In case I haven't made it abundantly clear, I don't always give a good goddamn about what Sam thinks or wants."

"Yeah, we've noticed," Seth said with a hint of smirk. "My dad would have thought it was pretty badass you helping, though."

"I'm sure he would've," I said. "We talked each other into some pretty stupid shit when we were younger."

Seth sighed. "Seriously like…this is your job. Don't do this if you don't have to. We'll figure it out. Maybe one of the Cullens would help. They're really killer with technology. Bella said that they had all sorts of fake identities that one of the brothers ma—"

He squeezed his eyes shut when he saw my expression. "Oh crap. Forget I said that. I didn't mean…Aw, man."

I shook my head. "I think I probably don't wanna know."

"It's not bad, really," Seth said.

I was about to question that when my phone rang. "Swan."

"Chief," Maggie said. "I know you said you were just in for a bit this morning, but Martinez said I should notify you."

I sat forward. "Go ahead."

"Abandoned car on the side road. Martinez is requesting assistance. It's right by the same mile marker as the first fatal boulder incident."

My standing order to be notified of suspicious circumstances on the road —especially near on the boulder sites. "Another boulder?"

"No," Maggie said, "But the car was still running when the good Samaritan pulled up behind it. Caller states that nothing seemed to be broken or missing. 911 still on the line with them. Martinez is on route. Should I tell him you'll be meeting him?"

I made eye contact with Seth who shook his head with wide eyes, and I got why. Charlie from last night puking his beer into the kitchen sink would've agreed with him. But I had Martinez en route and this was too coincidental to not be related. If things went south and someone went down, it was going to be me.

One on one, we don't really stand a chance.

Remembering what Jake had said last night added to the pressure sitting on my chest. Seth wasn't going to let me go alone. Was I really about to throw Harry's kid into the line of fire right with me? What the fuck was I supposed to do?

"Chief?" Maggie asked again.

"Uh, yeah, I'll, uh…I'll meet him there. Where am I headed?"

As Maggie gave me the mile marker information, Seth muttered, "This can't be happening, right now," as he pulled out his cellphone.

I thanked Maggie and watched Seth hit the end call button. "What can't be happening?"

"Hold on," Seth said to me before running out the office door with phone in hand.

"Seth, where…ugh, damn it, kid."

There wasn't time to do any waiting. I got on the HT and reached out to Steve. "Martinez, 10-101—what's your position?"

After a moment, he responded, "10-106. Taking statement on a 10-37. Could use some backup out here."

"10-4. On my way."

I stood and grabbed my car keys. No way in hell was I gonna let Steve walk into a situation like this. He would have no idea that his gun wouldn't do a goddamn thing.

As soon as I pushed the station door open, I heard Seth call out to me, "Charlie! Wait!"

He was right next to me before I could take another step. "Jake wants to talk to you. I…I phased so he'd…Here," he said as he held his cell out to me.

I took the phone from him and kept walking to my car with it by my side. "Get in, kid."

Jake was yelling through the phone to get my attention as I opened my cruiser door, but I couldn't make out what he was saying. I was too focused on Seth who seemed to have frozen in by the trunk. "Kid, come on. Let's go. I assume you're coming, so get in the damn car. We don't have time."

The passenger door opened while I plopped myself down behind the wheel. Seth shut the door at the same time I did. I laid the phone in my lap while I started the car. "Aren't you gonna talk to him?" Seth asked.

"He's just gonna tell me not to do this," I said as got us underway. "And I'm not exactly in a rush to deal with that."

Once I pulled the car onto the road and flipped my lights on, I finally brought the phone up to my ear. "—ously, you need to just stop for one fucking second and fucking listen to—"

"Hey, hey, hey!" I yelled. "I'm here, alright? I'm here."

"Thank God," Jacob said in a rush. "Charlie, you need to turn your car around. Come back to the rez. We'll handle this from here."

"You guys anywhere in the area?"

He paused. "Not exactly, but—"

"Well, then, you know I can't do that, son," I said.

"Charlie, c'mon. Brady and Leah were taking a shift guarding the rez. They'll probably even beat you out there. And Sam and Jared are already headed back towards your location. They should be there in a half hour. Maybe less. You don't need to put yourself in danger."

I shook my head. "I gotta get Martinez outta there. As soon as he's clear, I'm out. We don't even know for sure it's them."

Liar.

"The fuck we don't," Jake said. "We followed a scent and caught another two of these fuckers not too far outside of Forks. Still trying to catch up with them. It's getting out of control."

"All the more reason to get Martinez to safety."

Jake growled on the other end. "Ugh! Charlie, I mean it. It is way too fucking dangerous for you to be out there."

"You sent reinforcements. It'll be fine for a few minutes."

"They're not going to be able to protect you if there's more than two of them." Next to me, I saw Seth set his jaw. "Charlie, we had two attacks in twenty-four hours, and this would be three. That's coordinated. You can't put yourself in the line of fire like this."

"Those people could still be out there, kid—"

"They're not," Jake said just loud enough for me to hear.

"—and I'm not going to just wash my hands of this…especially with one of my guys out there. These assholes already got one. Not letting them get to another."

Jake sighed. "Goddamn it, Charlie. Have you completely blocked yesterday out? What the fuck do you think is gonna happen when you get there and there's fucking leeches?"

"What the fuck is going happen is I'm just going to get Martinez outta there. Twitching body parts or no twitching body parts, I'm still in charge of his life. I'm not going to do something stupid, but I have to do this," I said.

"You are doing something stupid! Going is stupid! Going out there is stupid!" Jake yelled.

"Well, I'm going!" I yelled back.

Seth rolled his eyes. "Charlie, let me talk to him."

I shoved the phone at Seth, which probably wasn't fair of me. Wasn't anything the kid did. And I knew Jake right. I didn't have any fucking business heading out there on my own. But I couldn't shake the feeling that knowing the town's spooky little secrets made me partly at fault now if something happened. I wasn't gonna lose another guy.

Next to me Seth was wrapping up the phone call. "Well, yeah…I know…I know…I mean, I'll tell him, but you know Charlie."

Damn right you do.

"Sure. Yeah," Seth said before ending the call. "Jake says you're being a stubborn asshole."

"He doesn't know the half of it, kid."

Seth shook his head. "He's not wrong. Not to be rude, but this is pretty stupid."

"Tell me something I don't know," I muttered as I guided my car around the last bend before the mile marker Maggie had given me.

Sure enough, there was my deputy sitting in his squad car behind a black Ford sedan with its engine clearly running. I pulled my cruiser behind his and threw her into park. Before I could open my door, Seth grabbed my shoulder. "Jake says stay on the road. If there's a vamp out there, it'll be less likely to attack out in the open."

"Got it."

Seth didn't let go of my shoulder. "Less likely, Charlie. It still could. Please be careful."

One look at his eyes told me he was terrified about what I was about to do, so I beat down as much of the sarcastic tone as I could. "Always am. You, too."

He nodded, and then dropped his hand from my shoulder. The moment Seth opened his car door, he slammed it shut, again. "Fuck."

"So, it's true, huh?"

"Uh, yeah," Seth said. "Two of 'em."

"Here? Or were here?"

"Here."

"Where?"

"Back in the trees. Our side."

I dialed into Chief Swan as much as I could to beat back the fuzzy black around my vision. Martinez nodded to me in his rearview mirror and gestured that he'd be with me in a minute. The reality of the situation was sobering up my bravado faster than Billy's home remedies late on a Sunday morning. "You, uh, got a plan, kid?"

"Why the hell haven't they attacked the deputy?" Seth mumbled.

"Hey, kid!" He looked up at me. "Plan?"

Seth frowned and looked from the woods to Steve's car a couple times. "Uh, yeah. Maybe. I can smell Leah and Brady are already on the other side of the road. They weren't gonna go in two-on-two unless it came to that. Can you get your guy outta here so they can cross?"

"Why don't they just go further down and cross there?"

"No way is Lee leaving me," Seth said. "She pretends to be a bitch, but no one hurts me if she has a say in it. Should have seen what she did to that vamp that—"

"SETH."

He ran a hand through his hair. "Right, shit. I'm just…I'm not the plan-maker-guy."

We saw Steve start getting out of his car, and I turned back to Seth with wide eyes. He sat a little taller. "Alright. Okay. Get him outta here as fast as you can and then get back in the car. Let us handle ending these assholes. Alpha's orders."

"Alpha?"

"Jake," Seth said as we both got out of the cruiser.

That didn't exactly clarify things for me.

Seth tensed as soon as he got a full whiff of the air outside. I took a big lungful, but I sure as hell couldn't sense anything other than clean, Forks air. Not sure what was worse—being able to sniff out the danger or being completely fucking ignorant to it.

"Chief," Steve said as Seth darted off towards the trees on the other side of the road. "That's your friend's boy, right? The one job shadowing you? Where's he going?"

I shrugged. "Gotta take a leak. We tore outta the station pretty quickly."

Steve seemed to buy it well enough. "Thanks for coming out here, Chief. Wanted you to get a load of this. I swear to Christ this town is making me feel like Alice, these days."

I must have pulled a face hearing Alice's name, because Steve continued, "Like in Wonderland? You know, just crazy things and everything..."

Oh. Fairy tale Alice and not Alice-Alice.

"Yeah so…Anyway, Maggie fill you in?"

"She did," I said, looking into the thick trees to my right.

Steve started droning on about the interview he'd done with the good Samaritans before I arrived at the scene. Over his shoulder, the wooden cross memorial on the side of the road—weathered but with some fresh flowers—pulled my attention. We were closing in on a year since the boulders started showing up, and here we were…back where the first death happened. If we didn't do absolutely everything right, we'd be adding to the body count in the here and now.

Thing was—we had plenty already going wrong. For starters, I didn't like that the wolves were on the other side of the road. There was literally nothing standing in between the Cold Ones and me. Why the fuck had I insisted on coming out here? I really was a stubborn asshole when I wanted to be.

But Seth had a damn good point. Why the hell hadn't those things attacked Martinez—especially when he'd been all by himself with no other cars on the road? The car was like honey to human cop flies. He'd have been an easy target without witnesses. Even now, the way I saw the Cold Ones moving last night, they'd be on us before the kids could do shit-all to stop it if they wanted to be. So why didn't they want to be?

My shoulders dropped as my cop instincts started screaming at me. We knew these attacks were intentional…coordinated. What if we were somehow being monitored all the time without Jake and all them able to sense it? They'd know everything…relationships, daily life patterns…and how an abandoned car in the exact same spot as a previous attack would draw the town's sheriff—and the single kid protecting me—out. All the Cold Ones would need to do would be to split the wolves up and let me lead one group straight here.

Because the car was bait.

Just not for the humans.

This was wrong. This was so wrong.

"Why don't you go on back to the station," I interrupted, hoping to God that I'd started talking at a point in his conversation that kinda made sense. I didn't have time to wait for a good moment in the conversation. "I'll wait here for the guy to come back. Have a chat about just because you're not in the city doesn't mean you can leave your damn car running when you run off to piss in the woods."

Steve's eyes narrowed. "Charlie, the vehicle was still running when Mr. Peña came up on it. Keys in the ignition. We need to call this in."

Yes, of course we did. Follow procedure. Start a multiple hour process that we didn't have time for. Possible foul play meant canvas the area. Call in a search party. Grab evidence from the car. But I couldn't follow procedure. I couldn't do right by the law even though the poor guy that had been driving through my town was probably lying dead somewhere in those trees with his blood sucked out.

What the fuck was I supposed to do that wouldn't immediately look suspicious?

"Hey, uh, Charlie?" I heard Seth's voice from the woods. "Some dude has some massive runs and said the car is his. I'm gonna go try and find something for him to clean up with."

I hoped Steve didn't catch the edge in the kid's voice that I heard. For Seth to have called out to us like that meant time was beyond up.

"See? Told you. Damn tourist left his car running to go shit."

Steve looked back and forth from the woods to me a couple times and then laughed to himself. "I swear to God, I see something new every damn day. You can't make this stuff up."

Oh…you can.

After making sure Steve got all the way into his car and drove around the bend to safety, I started walking quickly over to my car. With so many predators, you're never supposed to turn your back and run.

I should have run.

"Hey, officer, looking for this?"

Before I could fully process what the guy meant, something dropped heavily with at my feet. The minute I looked down, I regretted it. The blob of flesh and guts had once been a person—the driver. Chunks were missing from his pale neck exposing tendons and muscle, and multiple bones had popped out of the skin when it landed making it look like a broken toy.

"Jesus mother fuck," I said as I scrambled backwards.

I turned around in a circle trying to figure out where the hell a body had come from, but I couldn't see anyone around.

The Cold Ones.

Vampires.

And then they were on me.

The wind got sucked right out of my body.

I couldn't tell what was happening.

The whole world around me was just a blur of color.

Had I taken a hit to the head?

Didn't seem like it. But I still couldn't make anything out.

Air rushed all around me and stung the shit outta my face, but when I tried to grab a deep breath—hell, a breath of any kind—my lungs came up with nothing. It was just rushing by too fast for me to take in.

As quickly as the whole thing started, it was over.

The world came rushing back to me all at once as I fell hard onto the ground cover. I was in the forest. That was about all I could say for sure. How the hell far had we actually gotten into the woods? I gasped for breath as a deep voice standing above me said, "Hey, puppies, you left your toy by the side of the road. Don't worry. I fetched it for you. It can watch while we rip you to shreds."

The world was still spinning around me when I tried to open my eyes. Between the dizziness and still not being able to breath right, I could only force them open for a second or two at a time.

The Cold One hadn't stuck around. Him and his buddy had taken on the wolves. Not that I could even fully process what was going on. Either everything was moving so much faster than last night or my brain got well and truly scrambled flying through the woods with a fucking monster. It was almost easier for me to watch the action in a weird time delay—the ferns popping back up after being crushed, branches shaking after the trunk took a hit.

I groaned as I pulled myself over the closest tree using the thickest groundcover has handholds. Everything hurt. When I got to the trunk, I used it as a support to get my legs back under me. My heart was about to thunder out of my chest, but the dizziness was a smidge better. Better enough to process some of what was happening, anyway. The wolves were taking hits, but they were giving it right back. They just needed to hold out a little longer before Sam and Jared would be here. Hadn't it already been a half hour?

A wolf with gray fur suddenly skidded across the forest floor and stopped about a dozen feet in front of me. It got back up on its feet and growled as it dropped into a crouch. I had no way of knowing if it was Seth, Leah, or Brady. Whoever it was, I wasn't too fucking proud to say I was glad to have it to hide behind. The Cold One who'd grabbed me was smirking at me on the other side.

All I could see was red.

On any given day, I take in my surrounding and briefly catalog people's features…what they're wearing…what they're driving. Even in a small town, the worst could happen and that information becomes crucial to a case. But in this moment, my cop brain was completely shut down.

The Cold One had bright red eyes, and I couldn't take my eyes off them. The Cullens' eyes might all have that weird eye color, but that's all it was—weird. This was different. It was a red that meant danger. A red that you'd see in nature to warn predators to not fuck around and find out. I wanted to run away as fast as I could, but I knew it wouldn't do me any good.

I was trapped.

"Aw, would you look at that? A guard doggie," the Cold One said.

The gray wolf trembled with the force of its next growl. While it ripped through my head and terrified the fuck out of me, it just made the vampire laugh. "Uh-oh. Angry puppy. Wanna play fetch again? I can throw your toy for you. Maybe make it squeak?"

Gray wolf charged at the Cold One who laughed at us just as the other one sent a wolf with light brown fur flying backwards into a tree. The brown wolf hit hard enough to splinter the trunk and knock over the top section of the tree as the it crashed to the ground. Gray wolf whined and dropped focus long enough for the Cold One it was fighting to get in a hard kick. It just barely regained its footing in time to shake off the Cold One from an attempt to crush its left flank.

The fight continued that way—the gray wolf having its attention pulled between helping the fallen wolf and protecting me…and barely getting out of being in serious trouble itself. Light brown and gray wolves had to be Harry's kids—I just didn't know which one was which. The way the gray wolf never stopped whining and yelping from the moment the other wolf went airborne made me think that it was Seth fighting the Cold One. He had always been so overprotective of his big sister, and he wasn't exactly doing a great job keeping a lid on his emotions. The Cold One had easily picked up on it and was taking advantage of every opening it gave him.

Further away, the wolf with darker brown fur was fighting the other Cold One. They were too far away for me to see exactly what was going on, but just like it had earlier today, I had Jacob's voice in my head.

"One on one, we don't really stand a chance."

Leah was still down by the tree breathing hard. This was going to go south real soon if she couldn't get back into the fight or if Sam and Jared give them some relief immediately.

The Cold One landed another good blow, this time a punch to the left side. It left Seth open for a hard shoulder check. He was still on his feet, but wobbling. His ear twitched back to listen to Leah's whines by the tree, but he stood his ground.

"You know, if you're so fucking worried about your buddy over there, why don't you go over there and help him out, little girl?"

Little girl.

Leah.

"Of course," it continued, "that means it'll be free eats the second you back away."

The gray wolf—Leah—snarled at the Cold One. My chest tightened as I realized that Harry's first born was standing in front of me ready to give her life for mine. Probably still pissed off at the world that I was in on their little secret. Clearly torn between saving my ass and coming to her brother's rescue.

Harry would have been so proud of her.

"Tick-tock, chickie. What's it gonna be? Or do you and me wanna do this?"

Harry's little girl…just like my little girl. I'd spent so long thinking I'd let Bella down that day in the woods. I wasn't about to stand here and not do anything.

This wasn't over. We just needed a little bit of time. But what the hell I could do?

"As the wolf, though, we can hear each other's every thought. Even the ones we've had before shifting are shared. More than that. We feel what each other feels. We're connected in a way that isn't really able to be described. In a fight, we can make plans in the moment that our enemies can't hear. And as long as we're in wolf form, we haven't found a limit to its range."

Holy shit.

Sam had said it, last night. Whatever Leah was thinking now, the rest of the pack would know. The calvary had to be close. I just needed to stall and get this fucker talking. My negotiation skills had never been put to the test in the field. I had no business negotiating with a perp in a hostage situation, let alone a Cold One…a vampire…who was trying to kill not only me but also Harry's only two kids. Putting myself into this mess would be pretty fucking stupid.

But I was not going to let Leah or Seth down.

And I was going to make it out of this to see my little girl.

So I did something pretty fucking stupid.

I opened my fool mouth.

"HEY!"

I had its attention. "You leave her the fuck alone, leech!" I yelled.

The smirk finally dropped from the Cold One's face. God dammit. The insult I'd heard roll off the boys' tongues just sort of…came out. So not the time. I wanted to get him talking, not prod him into attacking. "Leech? I think I need a fucking muzzle. Seems like dogs don't know when to stop barking. What else they been telling you, human?"

"They haven't told me a damn thing."

"Listen to your heart racing. You're lying. You're terrified."

Over the Cold One's shoulder, Seth was stabilizing on his feet as the other brown wolf—Brady— got a chunk out of the Cold One he was fighting. It screamed out in pain as Seth trembled for a moment before sprinting over to join in.

The tides were turning. Just hold on, Charlie. Just hold on.

"You know, your buddy over there is losing."

The Cold One shrugged. "Not my buddy. I don't give a fuck what happens to him."

"Fuck you, Cliff!" the one who was losing yelled.

So the asshole had a name.

"Well, I don't," Cliff said. "But I do give a fuck about how the hell you already knew what we are, human. Aro will be very interested to know exactly how much the dogs have told a flesh bag."

What the hell was A.R.O? Was that some sort of super-secret vampire organization this thing worked for? Or the Italians the kids had told me about? I sure hoped the rest of the boys caught that on Leah's wolf frequency, because that sure as shit didn't mean anything to me.

But he was finally talking.

"You'll never get the chance to tell them."

"Aw, c'mon. What happened to all that courage? How much do you know, Charlie?"

Cliff's perma-smirk turned into a full grin. Something about it made my skin crawl. It was like staring at Pennywise in real life. Was his mouth bigger than it looked? Was he able to show more teeth? Whatever was off, I hated it. But I hated the way it knew my name even more. "Fuck you," I said slowly.

So much for negotiation training.

Leah took another step back towards me and hunkered in close. I got the message loud and clear—I was making things worse.

Like I didn't already know that.

"Fuck me? Fuck me? No, no, no. Fuck you, buddy. You're nothing. You get that? Nothing."

The other Cold One screamed out as his right arm went flying several feet away. My ears started ringing like I'd been standing next to a bomb detonation, but at least it meant Brady and Seth were getting the upper hand. The advantage must have been so clear that Seth felt like he could moved closer to us. He stopped at Cliff's 8 o'clock when I'd caught his attention shook my head. Cliff's back was up against the wall. What else could we get out of him now that he was back on his heels?

Just a little more. Seriously, where the fuck are Sam and Jared?

"Nothing, huh? You're about to be on the losing end of 3 on 1, and both of your other buddies are probably roasting on an open fire with the rest of the pack, right now," I said.

"Both of them? Both? Oh my God, they really are fucking stupid, aren't they? There's eight of us. Eight. We came this way to find the stragglers we knew you'd leave behind, but the other five went to lead your friends far enough away. You hear that, pup?" The Cold One smirked at Leah and said directly to her, "If your friends only found two, then that means that other three are waiting for a good ol' fashioned ambush. At least none of them were dumb enough to split off and come back this way."

Cliff grinned in that awful way he did, and that was all she wrote for Leah. She leapt at that fucker with all she had while Seth ran up on him from the back. Wiped the smile off Cliff's face pretty good. Only problem was that it twisted into a horrible open mouth snarling that was absolutely worse than the cockiness.

I moved as quickly as I could to the other side of the tree like some lumber was gonna do me a fat load of good if Cliff or the other one we able to break free. Something told me the monologuing was over. Everything was back to moving too fast for me to track, but it seemed like the wolves still had the upper hand. But I wasn't counting any victories, yet.

Counting…

Wait…

If there were eight of them, and five led the bulk of the pack north, then that didn't leave two Cold Ones to come back down to Forks.

It left three.

Suddenly Sam and Jared not being here yet made sense. Were they caught up trying to take that one down? Did Seth, Leah, and Brady know from the telepathy thing?

I couldn't take the chance that they'd overlooked in being focused on protecting me.

"Jesus, guys! There's not two, there's—"

Before I could get my whole sentence out, I lost track of the world, again. Colors whooshed together, and I couldn't make heads or tails of where the hell I was. Something had one arm around my thighs and the other around my front at my chest like I was the ball in a touchdown run.

The third fucking Cold One.

I tried to scream, but at the speed we were going, all trying to suck in enough air to do that got me was a coughing fit. Struggling wasn't getting me anywhere, either—the arms just locked tighter around me. And for that moment, I accepted the fact that this was where it was gonna end for me. I didn't have a prayer in hell of fighting off a vampire.

Please, God, just let it be quick. You're not letting me see her one last time…least you owe me is for this to be over fast.

Just seconds later, the Cold One slowed to a stop and…set me down gently on a fallen tree. That awesome dizziness was back and it had brought back a side of nausea. My ears had never fully stopped ringing after Cliff's partner screamed, but it seemed like the wind that blew into them really did a number on them. I felt like I was underwater. It was saying something to me, but I couldn't make much out.

"…lie? Can…I…"

Hands that felt like it had just come in from shoveling pressed against my shoulders at the base of my neck and then moved up to my face and forehead. Why wasn't it killing me?

"…st rest…and cal…Safe…"

Safe?

"Charlie…me…Need you…-eathe…safe…Focus…my voice."

I know that voice.

When I forced my eyes open, the world was still spinning. I'd lost my peripheral vision, but I didn't need it to see the strange yellowish gold colored eyes boreing a hole into me. "Charlie, it's me…safe, now. No…going to hurt you, but…-eed you..-ry and calm dow-..."

"Oh my God," I yelled over the ringing in my eyes. "Carlisle?"